By the end of 2018, Bashar al-Assad and his allies had eliminated the major rebel strongholds in southern Syria, and the U.S. was preparing to abandon the northeast. In February, Assad’s forces began a largely successful assault on the last pocket of resistance in the country’s northwest. Yet despite these developments, Jonathan Spyer writes, the regime is by no means in a position to declare victory:

[W]hile the civil war that began in 2011 may effectively be over, events in the country indicate that no clear winner has emerged from the conflict. Syria appears set to remain divided, impoverished, and dominated by competing external powers. The Assad regime [itself] is beset by infighting at top levels, even as significant unrest returns to regime-controlled areas. . . . Syria remains territorially divided, with the regime controlling just over 60 percent of the country.

But even in the areas under his control, Assad is not succeeding in returning stability and re-consolidating his rule. The problem is first of all economic. Syria is a smoking ruin. Neither Assad, nor his patrons in Moscow and Tehran, have the money to begin desperately needed reconstruction. The Europeans and the U.S., meanwhile, will not offer assistance so long as the regime refuses all prospects of political transition.

This stalemate is not endlessly sustainable. Lack of money makes rebuilding impossible. This in turn leads to renewed instability. The economic fortunes of the Assads have deteriorated significantly further in recent weeks. The Syrian pound is in freefall.

Bashar al-Assad is not about to fall. But severe economic deterioration, regime infighting, re-ignited unrest from below, and fresh sanctions about to bite are combining to place his regime under renewed, severe pressure. It is all a long way from the victory parades of just two years ago.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.